Summertime News and Hot Links

 Hello Active Sierra Madre! 

It's been a while since my last email, but there has been a lot happening, so I want to get you all caught up. 

News: 

• New format: I am using Google's Blogger to post our newsletters because it gives me more options to share a wider variety of links, videos, and images with you, it's shareable on a wider variety of platforms, and it provides a space where folks new to our group can find information and where everyone can find an archive of our posts. I'm not a graphic designer, so I'm keeping it simple. Let me know what you think! 
• Transportation Subcommittee News: I've been asked to serve on the city's new Transportation Subcommittee, which is a subcommittee of the Community Services Commission and works with city staff and Commissioners to address a wide variety of transportation needs in Sierra Madre. We will be exploring opportunities to improve transit connectivity in town, which is especially important for transit dependent folks. The issue has become more pressing since Metro suspended regular bus service to Sierra Madre in June 2020, and replaced it with Metro Micro, a ride-hailing service that has some advantages, but also some limitations compared with regular bus service. There will be important opportunities for community engagement in the future, which I will keep you appraised of.
  
• We are still waiting for the Complete Streets Safety Assessment report from Berkeley Safe TREC and I hope to share some information when we have it.

 

Community members and city staff participated in a complete streets safety assessment with Berkeley SafeTREC researchers in June. 

Upcoming Events:

• Mark Your Calendars! Celebrate Pasadena's first 2-way protected bike lanes on Union Street with  a ribbon cutting and bike ride, Saturday, September 9, at Pasadena City Hall. Time TBA. If anyone wants to take your bike on the Metro from Arcadia Station to Memorial Park Station to participate in the bike ride, let me know. 
• School starts soon and it's not to early to mark your calendars for Walk, Bike, and Roll to School Day, October 4, 2023.
  

Summer Travel: 

• I recently returned from a car-free vacation trip to Carlsbad, riding my ebike to the Arcadia Station, taking the Metro to Union Station, and then the Metrolink OC Line to Oceanside. It was a short, pleasant bike ride from the Oceanside Transit Center to Carlsbad on the Coastal Rail Trail and well-maintained bike lanes. I was impressed with the improvements the cities down in North San Diego County are making for walking and biking, including protected bike lanes. As a result you see a wide variety of people of all ages using bikes (and particularly ebikes) to get around for local trips. They seem to be much farther along than we are here in the San Gabriel Valley. It makes me wonder why the cities down there seem to have more political will and vision than we do. It is important to remember that political will here can be changed, however.
  
• Enjoy some images from my bike-train trip that show some of the great bike infrastructure in North County, San Diego: